CASE STUDY
AutomateNow Company and Director Data API
Challenge
AutomateNow needed a reliable internal API layer that exposed Creditsafe and Companies House data through one controlled interface. Without that wrapper, each downstream consumer would have needed to handle different authentication models, payload structures, retries, validation and provider-specific logic separately, increasing operational risk and slowing future automation work.
Solution
MPED designed and built an Azure Functions-based integration layer that standardised access to company and director data from Creditsafe and Companies House. The delivery included external API clients, request validation, resilience patterns, aggregated directorship workflows, operational logging, correlation IDs, and automated unit and end-to-end test coverage for the core integration paths.
System functionality
- Exposed a health endpoint for service availability and environment mode checks
- Enabled controlled Creditsafe authentication, company search and company report retrieval
- Returned current director data from Creditsafe reporting flows
- Built a Creditsafe directorship view by enriching company data with People API lookups
- Enabled Companies House company search, company profile retrieval and directors retrieval
- Built a Companies House directors appointments endpoint from multi-step officer appointment traversal
- Added correlation IDs and structured request handling around upstream calls
- Supported downstream consumers through a cleaner internal API contract instead of direct third-party integration logic
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
- Runtime based on .NET 8 and Azure Functions isolated worker
- Lightweight HTTP wrapper API over Creditsafe and Companies House integrations
- Multi-step enrichment flows for director appointments and directorship data
- Retry handling for transient upstream failures and rate-limited responses
- Token redaction and internal-key-gated reveal flow for sensitive auth handling
- Unit tests plus opt-in sandbox and live-compatible end-to-end tests with timestamped JSON evidence logs
Technologies
- .NET 8
- Azure Functions v4 isolated worker
- C#
- HTTP API integrations
- Polly retry policies
- xUnit
- JSON-based test artifacts
APPLICATIONS
- Internal workflow automation requiring company lookup and due diligence data
- Director and directorship checks across multiple external data sources
- Back-office and product services using one internal API instead of direct third-party integrations
- Future automation and company-intelligence features built on reusable endpoints
Results
- Delivered 9 HTTP wrapper endpoints across Creditsafe and Companies House flows
- Unified 2 external company-data providers behind one internal API surface
- Added automated unit coverage for token caching, redaction behaviour and re-authentication flow
- Produced opt-in end-to-end integration tests against real sandbox and live-compatible services
- Generated timestamped JSON artifacts for verification and troubleshooting
- Reduced the need for each downstream consumer to rebuild provider-specific auth, retries and data composition separately
Summary
This company and director data API gave AutomateNow a safer and more reusable way to work with Creditsafe and Companies House data. By standardising external provider access behind a tested Azure Functions layer, MPED reduced integration friction for downstream consumers and created a cleaner foundation for future automation and data-enrichment workflows.